


New Year's Day, 1992

by CatalenaMara



Category: White Nights (1985)
Genre: Multi, Polyamory, The fall of the Soviet Union
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28060149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatalenaMara/pseuds/CatalenaMara
Summary: The Soviet Union has fallen.  In their home in NYC, Darya Greenwood, Raymond Greenwood, and Nikolai "Kolya" Rodchenko begin to absorb this historic change.  Polyamory.
Relationships: Darya Greenwood/Raymond Greenwood/Nikolai "Kolya" Rodchenko
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	New Year's Day, 1992

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FairestCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairestCat/gifts).



> Many thanks to my beta [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Muriel_Perun/profile)[](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Muriel_Perun/)**Muriel_Perun** for your excellent insights.

Ash. Dust. Hard to breathe, hard to see in the dim grey light. Heart pounding. Searching, searching, through frozen bodies piled up like firewood. Dragging them aside. Frantic, can’t breathe, panic electric in her veins.

She shoved one body off another. Heartbeat skyrocketing – there! Her husband’s face.

Raymond’s face, as grey as the ashes sifting around them. She shook him, hard, his body as stiff as wood, frozen as the ground around them.

She screamed his name –

Woke, gasping, heart thudding, and looked directly into Raymond’s peaceful sleeping face, next to hers on the long white-cased pillow. A moment, her breath hitching as she tried to calm herself, focused on his face, then on Kolya’s, just behind her husband. The three of them, together, in Kolya’s ridiculous big bed that she had once joked was bigger than Raymond’s and her apartment in Siberia.

She relaxed, tried to shove away the remaining shreds of the nightmare, but all-too-real memories surged: of Raymond’s drawn grey face and too-thin body, of the chronic cough that had plagued him for the months of his recovery from his Siberian imprisonment. Of the nightmares Raymond still suffered, the same bloody, soul-destroying shadow of Vietnam that had plagued his sleeping hours for so very many years.

Sunlight filtered in through the large window and the room grew brighter, but her men slept on. They’d only gone to bed a few hours ago, home from an exuberant and wildly drunken émigré New Year’s party, everyone talking at once about what had just happened, as if all the words in the world weren’t enough to take it all in.

Everything had changed.

But what did it even mean to them?

Once home, they’d fallen into their big bed in a tangle of arms and legs and deep kisses and whispered words and frantic lovemaking. She was still faintly sore.

Raymond’s mouth, so close to hers, slack in sleep. She moved her face closer, thinking to kiss.

No. Best to let him – let them sleep. For her, there would be no more sleep this morning. Not after that nightmare.

She eased out of the bed, put on her winter slippers and her robe, then paused for a moment to look at the two men, snug in the blankets and bedspread. Kolya was spooned against Raymond’s back, and she could see from the shapes in the bedding that his arm was draped over Raymond’s waist.

For an instant, she felt the ghosts of their touches against her skin – soft, loving caresses in the aftermath, Kolya’s lips brushing her forehead, Raymond lying quietly on his side behind her, hand sliding slowly from her knee to her hip. Everything quiet now, their breathing calming, and she, still caught in the afterglow, feeling so protected and loved. Raymond pressing a kiss to her shoulder, her smiling, murmuring her love for him in Russian. Kolya resting one hand on her waist. Raymond reaching up those few more inches, resting his hand on Kolya’s. Then Raymond reaching down, pulling up the bedding, covering them all. Together. 

Safe. Loved.

She smiled when Raymond muttered something in his sleep. Kolya shifted slightly, not waking, and settled again, his head a fraction of an inch closer to Raymond’s. 

She’d better go check on Nik. He’d probably be up already. She spent a short time in the bathroom, then closed the bedroom door quietly behind her.

The expansive main room, even larger and more luxurious than the one Kolya had had back in Leningrad, remained littered with dozens of American and Russian magazines and newspapers covering the coffee table and the side tables, and abandoned open on the sofas. Headlines screamed: “Death of Soviet Union!” and “Soviet Disunion!”, or, more quietly, “USSR Passes Into History”, “The Soviet State, Born of a Dream, Dies”, “Gorbachev, Last Soviet Leader, Resigns”, and “Communist Flag is Removed”.

What would it all mean? 

Unsettled, faintly jittery, mind racing, she relied on routine. She would straighten up the living room later – they’d all want to look at those papers and magazines again. She went to the kitchen, started coffee, and then went to Nik’s room. Her son was up, of course, sitting on the floor, zooming his toy cars around and making squealing noises. He got up when she came in. She went to her knees, opened her arms, and hugged him close. “Little one, little one,” she crooned in Russian. Not all the remnants of the nightmare were gone, and she squeezed him tightly, blinking back tears as those long dark months of her pregnancy came back to her. 

How she had hated Kolya, for tearing her away from Raymond, from everything she had ever known. How she had loved Kolya, for his singleminded obsession to return her husband to her, for his taking her in to his luxurious apartment, for being there for the entire course of her pregnancy. For giving her a safe home in this strange new land.

How she loved him – him and Raymond both.

She blinked as a flood of memories overcame her. Watching Kolya and Raymond rehearse their first joint performance, seeing the way their gazes held, seeing the way they’d embraced after the final steps had been taken, smiling at each other with such pure delight – no comradely European embrace but something deeper and more intense – had been like seeing the sun emerge from clouds. They wanted each other; that was as clear as bright daylight, and it had left her shaken, wondering where there was any room for her.

She’d said something – she didn’t remember what – and was about to turn away when they’d seen her and stopped dancing. Raymond had called, “Dasha!” and then he and Kolya simultaneously opened their arms and beckoned to her.

It had been as simple as that. And as complicated as everything else she’d experienced in living in this strange new country, where people were free, as long as they knew all the rules, knew what to tell others, what to keep secret. One of the important rules was that money –a lot of money – made life much, much easier. And Kolya had money. And Raymond now did, as well. 

She kissed the top of Nik’s head and he gave her a quick hug. She smiled at him, feeling an upsurge of love at this wonderful, and often exasperating child. His beautiful eyes were so like his father’s, and the shade of his skin was that perfect mid-point between hers and Raymond’s. He’d made a mess of his room, as always, pillow on the floor and toys strewn everywhere. She wouldn’t bring it up now; would save being a strict mother for later in the day.

She felt close again to tears, this new and amazing and unsettling news, foreshadowed months ago by the fall of the Berlin Wall, bringing all those complicated feelings back from those last terrible days in Leningrad, and that horrible year that followed. 

Everything had been so chaotic, after Kolya had dragged her away from Raymond to freedom. She’d been sick so often during her pregnancy; sick with fear for her husband, not knowing if he was in prison or dead. Sick with fear she would lose this child, lose everything.

Now, years later, she had been content to remain in the present as much as possible, to try to keep the shadows of the past confined to nightmare, rather than overtaking her in the daylight hours. It was simply the shock of knowing – but not quite believing – the old regime was truly gone that was bringing back these awful feelings. She would always be Russian. Shedding the weight of being Soviet – that was a change that would take time to get used to.

She ruffled Nik’s hair. “Mom!” Nik whined and squirmed away from her tight grip, bringing her back to the present, his voice sounding just like the way that word was pronounced on those TV shows. How American he sounded.

How American he was.

“Zoom, zoom!” Nik began racing his cars again, then paused, looking up at her through his thick eyelashes, a questioning look on his face. She stood up. “Breakfast,” she announced briskly and headed back to the kitchen, her son following closely behind.

Her men emerged from the bedroom as soon as the smell of coffee, fried eggs, and pancakes drifted through the apartment. Rubbing their eyes and looking hungover, they grabbed their coffee cups as soon as they sat down. 

“I wonder how Chaiko is doing?” Kolya said, breaking the silence after drinking down his coffee. He grinned slyly at Raymond, and all three of them laughed. Last night’s jokes as to everyone’s preferred fate for the KGB officer came back to her mind. Nik just looked at them for a moment, with a ‘who can figure out adults’ expression on his face, then continued eating cereal.

They began rehashing everything that had been said last night – what it all meant, what would happen next? Gorbachev’s resignation on December 25, Boris Yeltsin’s ascendency – they’d said it all over the past few days and, she knew, they’d say it all again. It was just too big, too incomprehensible that, in a matter of months, her home country had made such radical changes in the lives of a people who might as well have been frozen in Siberian ice. 

As they ate, they became more animated, gesturing and frequently touching each other and her to emphasize a point, or share jokes about the Kremlin and the KGB that could only have been whispered – if that - before. She finished her meal and relaxed and just watched them, enjoying the security and happiness their ease with each other gave her, still marveling at how they had successfully achieved this life, secret though it must be. Raymond noticed her glance, and smiled and reach out to take one hand; Kolya doing the same an instant later.

Nik shifted impatiently and suddenly said loudly, “I want to go to the zoo!”

They all chuckled. Darya focused on Nik and considered. He gave her his best pleading look, and she said, “Later this week?” She glanced at her men. “Friday?”

“Sure, why not,” Raymond said. “Lions and tigers and bears, son?” 

Nik grinned. “Snakes, too.”

Kolya laughed indulgently, “Snakes, too. Of course. Big ones!” 

Nik crowed in delight. Darya shook her head, smiling, looking at her men. They smiled back, sharing her indulgent amusement and, now that breakfast was over, got up from the table and headed toward the living room, carrying refilled coffee cups.

Darya glanced at the clock. “Nik, it’s time for the parade.” She took Nik to the TV room and settled Nik in front of Kolya’s huge cube of a television set. When she returned to the living room, Raymond was standing by the great window, looking out into the cityscape. Kolya, seated on a sofa, was picking through the newspapers and magazines. He glanced up.

“Such a strange thing that California parade is,” Darya observed, moving a magazine from the sofa to the coffee table and settling down beside Kolya. “Who would think of decorating vehicles with strange creatures and covering them with in flowers? In mid-winter, no less?”

Kolya snorted, not quite a laugh. “Can you imagine such a thing happening in Russia? Even now?”

She tried to imagine such a thing. “No.” She laughed, briefly, feeling a strange sense of displacement, imagining such a parade instead of marching soldiers and military vehicles passing in front of Lenin’s great statue, feeling as if she were there, in Leningrad, instead of here, in New York City. In America. “I’m trying, but I can’t. How do they think of all these strange creatures anyway?” 

“Disneyland fairytales,” Kolya observed.

“He’ll want to go there,” she said.

“…All right,” Kolya said, after a moment. She looked at him in concern. “It’s nothing,” he said, and after another pause said, “Just something someone once said to me.” He sounded wistful, and she put a hand over his. He turned his hand, palm up, and enclosed her hand with his.

Raymond had turned to look at them. “Disneyland?”

“Have you ever been?” Darsha asked.

“No,” he said simply, and there was an entire world in what he left unsaid. “But if Nik wants to go…” He let the sentence trail off.

Kolya looked back and forth between then. “Sure. Why not?” He picked up a magazine and leafed through it rapidly with nervous fingers. He set it down and grabbed his coffee cup, took up another magazine, and stared for a long moment at an image of the fallen statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the KGB. “Mother Russia,” Kolya said in a low, emotion-filled voice. He shook his head in wonder, met her gaze, and squeezed her hand. “Who could ever imagined this day?”

“Never in my life,” she said, studying the photo, imagining Chaiko’s body crushed beneath that huge iron statue, the rage she always felt for that man burning through her once again. She took in a deep breath, reliving those moments of terror, seeing once again that evil man’s face as he preached Soviet brotherhood and generosity through his teeth while watching her being taken into the safety of the American consulate, beyond his reach. Leaving Raymond behind.

Kolya shook his head again, then got to his feet. She stood as well, and followed him as he strode over to join Raymond at the window.

The two men parted automatically, letting her step between them. Raymond rested one arm around her back, Kolya, on the other side, moving to encircle her shoulders, one hand clasped around her upper right arm.

Below them, New York City jittered with its usual high-octane energy, taxis crowding the streets, pedestrians starting and stopping in every direction in some kind of grand and chaotic dance. It would be cold outside, but nowhere near the bitter chill of Siberia. She’d been terrified of this city at the start, the chaos, the disorder, the noise; the intoxicating and terrifying sense of a freedom so alien, so overwhelming she’d spent the first few months here staying in this apartment, while her body changed and grew larger. Then, when the child moved within her, and she’d careened from despair she would never see Raymond again to a kind of delirium in which there was no question but that he would return, believing that Kolya and his friends would win his rescue.

She ventured out in the neighborhood alone now, sometimes to go shopping, sometimes walking for the sheer pleasure of it. After the months of Raymond’s recovery he and Kolya had taken her everywhere, from the Met to Harlem. She’d been afraid of the gazes of strangers then, and saddened by the immediacy of Raymond’s rejection by his family. But nearly a year after Raymond’s return, his father had decided he wanted to see his grandson, and things had slowly calmed between Raymond and his family. And, as the years had gone by, any anger the Americans felt toward one some still considered a traitor had not so much as softened as had been set aside by most. Others, she knew, would never forget or forgive, but they hadn’t seen picket signs in front of the venues where Kolya and Raymond performed, together or separately, in some time.

Raymond turned away from the view, lowering his arm, letting it drift past Kolya’s, still embracing her waist, then grasped her hand, turning her and Kolya away from the view. His expression intense, he met her eyes, and then Kolya’s, and held Kolya’s gaze. His voice was flat when he asked, “Would you ever go back?”

Kolya looked him over, and though his expression initially showed longing, he quirked a sorrowful smile. “You must be joking.”

“And you?” Raymond’s gaze was on her now.

“Our son is American,” she replied.

His voice softened, “And you?” he repeated. His gaze grew sorrowful. “You are Russian.”

The memory of that terrifying escape from Kolya’s apartment to the American embassy was never far from her, waking or sleeping. “Never,” she said. “Our son is free. And so are we. I will never stop being Russian. But I can be Russian here, with all our friends. Our newspapers, our cafes, our meeting places. And my work is important.” She had only just started a part-time position as an interpreter, but that work had brought new joy and a sense of accomplishment to her life.

Raymond looked like he wanted to say more. He’d asked her once before if she’d regretted leaving the USSR; he’d apologized for not even asking her, but as she knew and he knew, there had been no time. Still, it had pleased her to be asked; it pleased her that he’d thought of doing so, although neither he nor Kolya nor circumstances had allowed it at the time. 

He smiled and brushed his lips lightly against hers. The question she wanted to ask she left unsaid: was he truly happy here in America? Because, as much as Kolya had insisted things in America had changed, it was only a surface gloss. Cosmopolitan though NYC was, she had quickly learned what it meant to be black in America. New York’s first black mayor, David Dinkins, whose election they had all celebrated as a great step forward, was already embroiled in controversy. Raymond had been so happy, so joyful, a few months ago when Mayor Dinkins had hosted Nelson Mandela at Gracie Mansion. But that joy was matched by his anger that so little had actually changed; that black men were still being targeted by police for the color of their skin.

No, she wouldn’t ask that question. Not now. His idealistic hope for a country that promised a better place for black people had led him nearly to ruin, but it had led him to her. And now they were here, and he was doing work that he loved. But when Nik was a little older – there were dangers their son would face, and they would need to discuss them.

“Come,” Kolya said in an abrupt shift of mood. “Let’s look at the sketches again.” She smiled at him, brushed her hand lightly against his, and she and Raymond followed him into the study. The walls were crowded with photos of their performances, both solo and together, with a large poster of their last concept dance having pride of place in the center of the rear wall. 

Kolya finished spreading out the new sketches on the big desk, costume concepts and proposed art for the program-book cover of their next joint production. She stepped closer, focusing with a fresh eye on the poster designs they’d brought home a few days earlier. 

There were several, all good, but there was no question in her mind which one was right. There Kolya and Raymond were, in timeless period dress, in the act of circling each other, gazes locked, adversaries on the verge of becoming allies. The image caught the power of the moment, the energy, the drama.

“That one,” she said. 

Her men looked at the sketch, looked at each other, and then at her. “That one,” they agreed. They reached to her, opening their arms, and they all moved into a tight embrace.


End file.
